Tenor in townAkron Beacon Journal - February 7th, 2008 Youngstown native Lawrence Brownlee, who dazzles audiences with his fast vibrato, to perform at E.J. Thomas Hall with pianist Martin Katz.
He's a rising star, an African-American man in a field where race has historically been an issue but its starting to be less so. No, it's not Barack Obama, though the presidential hopeful does inspire him with his example of getting beyond the old conversations. It's operatic tenor Lawrence Brownlee, also known as Larry to those who grew up with him in Youngstown. A big crowd of family and friends, including Brownlee's girlfriend, will be listening at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at E.J. Thomas Hall when Tuesday Musical presents him in recital. The debut follows critically acclaimed performances at such venues as Milan's La Scala and New York's Metropolitan Opera by the 35-year-old singer. For opera singers, success hangs on finding your niche, or your fach (rhymes with Bach), as they call it: your vocal range and character of sound, and the roles that go along with it. Brownlee's specialty is Rossini, whose high, super-fast, ornamented writing requires the vocal equivalent of speeding around the curves on a mountain's edge. It takes a daredevil to want to even try to sing this music, but the style fits Brownlee like a race car driver's helmet. Identifying his specialty, let alone overcoming an aversion to singing, took some time for Brownlee. Growing up in a family where his dad led the choir, his mother sang solos, he and his siblings were expected to be musical. "I hated to sing," he said with a laugh in recent phone call from his home in Atlanta. "I would have an aching tremor in the pit of my stomach, but my parents would make me sing." One would never guess, listening to Brownlee's recent recording on the EMI Classic Debut Series. The singer performs with a silken tone, fast vibrato and a dazzling facility as he easily tosses off all matter of ornaments. The program that the tenor will sing in Akron with Pianist Martin Katz, acclaimed in his own right, is a virtual scrapbook of Brownlee's life. The pieces on it represent pivotal moments in Brownlee's career, he said. Take Tu lo sai<, an aria by Giuseppe Torelli on Tuesday's program. That's the piece that Brownlee sang at a program for gifted high school music students and the first classical aria he ever sang. A teacher came up to him afterward and asked him if he were considering a career in music. He wasn't, but being asked made him think again. In the beginning, Brownlee's idea of singing was to emulate the great tenors Pavarotti and Domingo and to sing the lyric roles that they did. But with his high voice and natural ability to sing florid writing, another repertory called: the bel canto roles written by Rossini Donizetti and Bellini. The role of Count Almaviva in Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville has become a calling card for the tenor. A music professor at Anderson University, Fritz Robertson first introduced Count Almaviva's aria "Ecco ridante" to Brownlee. "He put this piece of music in front of me, from The Barber of Seville, and said "Let's see if you can sing this.' So I sang it, with all the scoops and tricks and runs and it was at tha point that he realized-and I realized-that I had all of those abilities. "Those melismas and the coloratura runs in that piece made me put my eyebrows up! And I started doing that rep," Brownlee said. After graduate school in the highly regarded voice department of Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, Brownlee started collecting awards. In 2001, he was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Awards. He sang on the stage of the Met when he received that award, and again when he returned to make his Metropolitan Opera debut in April 2006, singing the role of Count Almavia. The year 2006 was a good one, with Brownlee entering the books as the first artist to receive both the prestigious Marian Anderson and Richard Tucker Awards. Singing speaks for itself Brownlee has heard his share of skepticism about the career potential of a short (5 feet 6 inches tall in his shoes) African-American tenor. He would rather let his record of success speak for itself. "If the libretto says (a character) is supposed to have blonde hair and blue eyes, I don't want to sing that: it's too far (a stretch). But does Count Almaviva have to be white? Especially in Spain, with the Moorish influence? I think of it as my responsibility to convince someone, this can work." In summer 2002, Brownlee was scheduled to make his appearance at La Scala in The Barber of Seville . He ended up making it a week early, subbing for an indisposed star, the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez. La Scala is famous for its rabid fans who don't hesitate to boo the biggest stars, including Renee Fleming in recent years. Brownlee understood what a lion's den he was entering. "You think,'Oh my gosh, if this person was booed, who am I?' I'm happy to say I was not booed and was rather accepted. People were very nice to me," Brownlee said. Repeat invitations to the opera house have followed. Other important debuts have included the Met, the Hamburg State Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Covent Garden and Seattle Opera. Shortly before coming to Akron, Brownlee made his debut with Chicago Symphony. After the Akron recital,he'll return to Milan to sing Carmina Burana with the Filarmonica della Scala. Later this season,, he'll debut with Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin in Rossini's ii turco in italia. "The happy news is that Brownlee held his own from start to finish with his more seasoned colleagues, most of whom had already performed several times in the new production by Bartlett Sher....He has mastered the bel canto technique of fast runs, trills and ornamentation that Rossini requires, and stopped the show with his acrobatics in the aria Cess di piu resistere late in the evening," wrote Mike Silverman of the Associated Press. Florez, also 35, is not just a colleague but a friend who recently invited Brownlee to his wedding. "We're buds. He's a wonderful singer, and to have a chance to learn from watching him has been great,: Brownlee said. To this younger singer, the chances to sing at La Scala and the Met have been the opportunity to tread on what he calls hallowed ground. Performing in Northeast Ohio on Tuesday, he'll be back on friendly and familiar turf. |
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